NASA’s new visualization shows a black hole’s warped world and it looks like something you would see in a trippy carnival mirror.
The moving images replicate a black hole’s appearance where infalling matter has collected into a flimsy, scorching structure called an accretion disk. Extreme gravity from the black hole skews light emitted by different regions of the disk, resulting in the bizarre warped view above.
Visualize a mind-bending black hole 😱
The gravity of a black hole is so intense, it distorts its surroundings like a carnival mirror. Simulations help us see what Einstein meant when he said gravity warps the fabric of space & time. Get sucked in: https://t.co/9TK79WZ6Fr pic.twitter.com/B6k7cHjpA6
— NASA (@NASA) September 26, 2019
Observing the black hole’s unusual silhouette could be tricky, but it can be broken down into three key areas: Bright knots are constantly forming and vanishing in the disk, as magnetic fields twist through churning gas. Near the black hole itself, gas orbits at close to the speed of light, while the outer portions spin around at a slower speed. This difference expands and sheers the bright knots, creating light and dark lanes in the disk.
When viewed from the side, the disk looks more illuminated on the left than on the right. Glowing gas on the left side of the disk moves toward us at a speed so fast that the effects of Albert Einstein’s relativity elevates its brightness. The right side experiences the opposite effect, where gas shifting away from us becomes dimmer. This asymmetry dissipates when we look at the disk head on, since none of the material is moving along our line of sight.
At the closest point to the black hole, the gravitational light-bending accumulates so much that we can observe the underside of the disk, as an illuminated ring of light outlines the black hole. This glowing “photon ring” features multiple rings, which progressively become thinner and fainter, from light that has surrounded the black hole two, three, or even more times before fleeing to reach our vision. The black hole modeled above is spherical, making the photon ring look nearly circular from any viewing angle. Inside this photon ring is the black hole’s mysterious shadow, which is dark and vast.
“Simulations and movies like these really help us visualize what Einstein meant when he said that gravity warps the fabric of space and time,” explained Jeremy Schnittman, who generated the images at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. “Until very recently, these visualizations were limited to our imagination and computer programs. I never thought that it would be possible to see a real black hole.”
More on Geek.com:
- Scientists Find ‘Hungry’ Supermassive Black Hole Eating 3 Meals Daily
- Scientists Behind First Black Hole Image Win $3 Million Prize
- Chandra X-Ray Data May Have Revealed Most Distant ‘Cloaked’ Black Hole
from Geek.com https://ift.tt/2m1KIjm
via IFTTT
0 comments:
Post a Comment